Guitar lessons in Thames Ditton
Bring me the song. Acoustic, electric or classical — most people arrive with a few chords and one piece they badly want to get right, and that is the best possible place to start.
Who these lessons are for
- Children from around seven, on a properly sized instrument.
- Adults who have owned a guitar for years and want finally to be able to play it.
- Self-taught players who have hit a ceiling and cannot see over it.
- Anyone wanting classical technique, reading, or grade exams on any of the three styles.
What a lesson looks like
Half an hour, forty-five minutes or an hour, at the same rates as piano. We start with what you can already do — even if that is nothing — and the song you most want to play. Chords, scales and reading come in as tools for getting that song right, never as homework set for its own sake. If you have taught yourself and something is not working, the first job is usually untangling one habit rather than adding new material, and that is often a single lesson rather than a term.
Levels and exams
Beginner through to advanced, on acoustic, electric and classical guitar. Grade exams available through ABRSM, Trinity and Rockschool depending on the style you are working in — Rockschool tends to suit electric players better, and I will say so if it does.
In Tom’s words
I came to the guitar through the Beatles, like a great many people my age, and I have never got over how much there is in those records once you start pulling them apart. There is something in there that just about everybody loves, whoever they are, which makes them the easiest place I know to start. Learning to play Blackbird properly is a good example: it is a Bach idea in a folk guitar part — a bass line and a tune moving together over an open string — and once a student can hold both at once and hear what is going on, the wall between "classical" and "pop" stops being useful to them. That is usually the most valuable thing I manage to get across.
What it costs
Prices are being confirmed — please ask and Tom will tell you straight away.
A free tool that helps
Guitar Tuner — six-string standard by default, and a dozen other tunings behind the picker. Free, no signup, works on a phone.
To print: Guitar tab paper — blank six-line tab with the string names down the left (there is a stave-and-tab sheet too); and Blank guitar fretboard diagrams — five seventeen-fret necks for chord shapes and scale patterns (PDFs, A4). All the blank paper.
Worth reading next
Ready to start?
Tell Tom what you would like to play and roughly where you are, and he will come back to you with times.
Get in touch